Throughout the past few weeks Doha, the capital of the Middle Eastern emirate Qatar, hosted the World Championships of Handball. The sport itself is rather small, mainly popular in Europe, but with a few newcomers, within the world top 20. The arrangements were immaculate, the service impeccable and the stadiums impressive. So far, so good. The final turned out to be a close game with France getting out on top of Qatar with a 25-22 win, securing their 5th World Championship title. Still, so far, so good.
Its oil resource has given the emirate possibility to invest in prominent companies and sports teams, such as the soccer clubs Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain.
However, there’s an issue with Qatar, an issue touching on what’s morally right. While on the surface there seems to be nothing strange – the French are a powerhouse of men’s handball and have been so for quite some time, winning the gold in both Beijing and London. And host nations usually do well, which would explain the silver-medal run Qatar managed to pull off. Qatar’s national handball consists of a majority of foreigners who obtained their Qatari visas only a few years, and in some cases months ago. While offering inflated wages to play in their domestic league, players are able to obtain a dual citizenships, no questions asked.
The Islamic emirate spreads its 4,676 square miles (slightly fewer sq. miles than Connecticut) along the gulf of Persia, with Saudi Arabia in the west and the United Arab Emirates in the south. Its oil resource has given the emirate ability to invest in prominent companies and sports teams, such as the soccer clubs Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain. While they are doing that they are also reinforcing their own country, securing big sporting events like the Handball Championships and the biggest event of them all, the FIFA World Cup, in 2022. Alongside this, they are using migrants as modern slaves to build their fancy stadiums and infrastructure. Their salaries and working rights would even rattle the most conservative conservative.
Hosting the World Cup gives you an automatic bye to the tournament, but there is no way Qatar would be competitive enough to play among the top 32 teams in the world by themselves. Is there anyone who thinks they won’t use the same strategy as they did for handball, getting already recognized international athletes visas? Well, although FIFA may have some sort of legislation in place, preventing players to change teams once they have played one game for a nation, Qatar has found a way around this. Since 2004, Aspire Academy, a sports academy based in Doha, has persuaded talented young soccer players, typically South Americans, to move to the emirate in exchange for coaching, housing and food. Come 2022, these players will be Qatari citizens and eligible to play in the World Cup.
So how far should we allow the boundaries of our sports to be pushed? I have a hard time understanding the rationale in allowing actions like this while at the same time being against something like performance enhancing drugs which essentially has the same objective – to make sports more competitive. Is allowing a country on steroids to participate in a sport where they would never have a chance included in FIFA’s many policies concerning “fair play”? As an exemplifying illustration, imagine the hockey teams of Slovenia, Great Britain and Italy being filled with Canadians just for the sake of making the Olympic Hockey tournament more exciting to watch.
Something is rotten and the international federations that should be governing it are doing nothing to make it stop. It puts money in their pockets while letting the fossil fueled middle-eastern nations use sport as a playground. If nothing is changed, we’ll be in spectacular, science fiction-looking stadiums while watching a Qatari national team filled with Brazilians and Egyptians.
Because nothing will stop Qatar from buying English and French soccer clubs, they will keep buying the World Cup and they will keep buying national handball and soccer teams. And while it looks like they do it for the fun of it, the Qatari sheiks are smarter than that. One day their adored natural resource will run out and the people who run Qatar know that.
So what do you do? You make Qatar the new center of the earth. The geographical positioning allows that, and the climate is hard to blame. All this enjoyed by an audience in top modern facilities, built by migrants on working visas who, for a few extra dollars, will wave a Qatari flag and sing their national anthem.
-Philip Evans
